But the war had already been going on for almost a year by then, and still Michael had chosen to go. And then the reality had come for all of them, and boys like Michael most of all. While he lay in those mud-filled trenches, did he ever think of Peter’s games, and how little they prepared him for the true horrors he’d find there? She’d heard Dr. Harrington remark to John once how lucky Michael had been to come home at all when so many didn’t. But one look at her baby brother, even now, is enough to make Wendy question whether Michael himself felt the same. He’d come home broken in a way no bandages, medicine, or stitching could fix.

When he’d first returned home from war, Wendy had never understood why Michael had continued to deny Neverland so vehemently. Wouldn’t he have wanted to cling to it as an escape, a shield, the way she used it later in the asylum? Now she understands perfectly well, a realization she should have come to far sooner. Why wouldn’t Michael continue to deny Neverland? Nothing here ever meant anything. The boys run through with stick swords stood right back up again and rejoined the battle. All she had to do was tie make-believe bandages around bloodless, invisible wounds, and they were good as new. Holding that truth alongside the reality of real war would have been like rubbing salt into a wound. Not just a lie, but a mockery of everything Michael had seen.

Of course Neverland wouldn’t have been a balm for Michael. He’d gone deeper into the real world than either she or John, and he’d seen all the evil it had to offer. The boys that would never grow up in his world weren’t magic-touched, they were simply rotting in their graves.

Wendy lets the ship take her weight, unsteady in a way that has nothing to do with the canted deck. The memories drag at her, the heaviness making her feel as though she’s been trapped in the ship for hours, always climbing and never emerging. Did Michael feel the same in the trenches, hiking miles in the mud and always waiting for enemy fire or bombs to fall?

She knows so little of what he suffered there, only the aftermath, only the pain, but none of the specific details. Ned and Michael speak of the war sometimes, making a show of playing at cards, but rarely glancing at their hands. She’s glad her brother and husband have each other. It used to hurt her—selfishly— that Michael could not speak to her as well.